AI contextual information shapes moral and aesthetic judgments of AI-generated visual art

Abstract

Throughout history, art creation has been regarded as a uniquely human means to express original ideas, emotions, and experiences. However, as Generative Artificial Intelligence reshapes visual, aesthetic, legal, and economic culture, critical questions arise about the moral and aesthetic implications of AI-generated art. Despite the growing use of AI tools in art, the moral impact of AI involvement in the art creation process remains underexplored. Understanding moral judgments of AI-generated art is essential for assessing AI's impact on art and its alignment with ethical norms. Across three pre-registered experiments combining explicit and implicit paradigms with Bayesian modelling, we examined how information about AI systems influences moral and aesthetic judgments and whether human art is implicitly associated with positive attributes compared to AI-generated art. Experiment 1 revealed that factual information about AI backend processes reduced moral acceptability and aesthetic appeal in certain contexts, such as gaining financial incentives and art status. Experiment 2 showed that additional information about AI art's success had no clear impact on moral judgments. Experiment 3 demonstrated that an implicit association task did not reliably link human art with positive attributes and AI art with negative ones. These findings show that factual information about AI systems shapes judgments, while different information doses about AI art's success have limited moral impact. Additionally, implicit associations between human-made and AI-generated art are similar. This work enhances understanding of moral and aesthetic perceptions of AI-generated art, emphasizing the importance of examining human—AI interactions in an arts context, and their current and evolving societal implications.